Around Maryland

It has been seven months since a majority of Baltimore County Council members called on the county school board to launch a nationwide search for a new leader, claiming that Superintendent Darryl Williams had offered “no real solutions” to critical problems facing the district. Now, with Williams facing a Feb. 1 decision to tell the board whether he wants another four years, his future remains tenuous.

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott led off the triumphant Martin Luther King Jr. Day Parade on Monday that he had promised city residents he would deliver. Drummers, dancers and pompom-twirlers rounded the corner at Eutaw Street shortly after noon and proceeded south down Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, the street named in honor of the slain civil rights leader.

Jamal Davis wanted to do something when he learned in May that Experience Corps, a tutoring program that links Baltimore City schools with adults 50 and older, might have to close its doors due to insufficient funding. Experience Corps is run by the Washington, D.C.-based AARP Foundation, which advocates for adults 50 and older. After AARP announced that it could no longer fund the tutoring program, a group of Baltimore-area tutors launched a campaign to keep it going.

When the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. visited Baltimore on Oct. 31, 1964, civil rights leader Leo W. Burroughs Jr. was thrilled to meet him. King was in town for a conference and to encourage Black voters to cast ballots in the upcoming election that pitted Democratic President Lyndon Johnson against Republican nominee Barry Goldwater. Johnson would go on to win in a landslide. “It was a great time,” said Burroughs, founder and president of Roots of Scouting Inc., a nonprofit teaching African American youth life skills, leadership and mentoring, according to its website. “I didn’t have much to say other than, ‘How you doing?’ and shook his hand. And he said he was tired, but he was gonna keep moving.”

The Ravens plan to make a number of improvements and additions to M&T Bank Stadium, such as adding a parking garage, relocating the press box to build more suites, and building new plazas on the north and south sides of the stadium, according to a copy of the team’s new lease. The 50-page agreement, which was approved by the state’s Board of Public Works last week, will keep the Ravens playing at M&T for the next 15 years, with two options for five-year extensions. The team plans to develop both the stadium’s north and south plazas to include “fan hospitality areas,” as well as retail stores, according to the document.

To call it a fixer-upper would be generous. There’s no running water, no heat, no electricity. Once one gets past the romance of buying a historic Chesapeake Bay lighthouse, there’s lead paint, asbestos and toxic benzene. Vandals broke down the door and seabirds died inside. Crap is everywhere. Oh, it sits in about 18-feet of water within a U.S. Navy testing site called a “danger zone.” Who wants the Hooper Island Lighthouse anyway? When the federal government auctioned the 120-year-old lighthouse in September, as a last resort, a bidding war broke out. The price jumped from $15,000 to $38,000. Then $189,000.

A little girl in Maryland got a big surprise for Christmas, but it wasn’t under her tree – it was an ancient fossil hiding underwater. Alicia Sampson wrote on Facebook that her daughters Molly and Natalie asked for insulated waders for Christmas so that they could “go sharks tooth hunting like professionals.” And as soon as they got the waders, that was just what they did. “The only thing Molly really wanted for Christmas was insulated chest waders because she knew she was missing out on some good fossil finds further out in the water,” Sampson told CBS News. “…As soon as they finished breakfast, they got their waders on as quick as they could and headed to the cliffs with my husband Bruce.”